Space Dandy: Check Out The First Ten Minutes Of Mayhem
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The creators behind Cowboy BeBop and Samurai Champloo have a new anime series coming out this January. It’s titled Space Dandy and will exclusively air on Adult Swim at the same time it premieres in Japan. For the first time ever, a new Japanese anime will air simultaneously around the world. While it’s unclear why Bones (the studio behind Space Dandy) is producing and launching the anime series this way, it’s believed a dual launch will cut down on piracy. Since the series will air on Adult Swim, it’s also likely that it will pop up for home consumption much sooner. Now you can get a sneak peek at the first episode, just to see if you can figure out what the hell is going on.
A ten-minute preview of the first episode of Space Dandy has hit the Internet for your consumption, though the footage actually aired in Japan a few days ago. Unfortunately for most of you, the footage above is in Japanese and there are no subtitles. You can still enjoy the manic visuals and tone, not to mention all the glorious anime fan service featured within. Namely the “breastaurant” Boobies, which is, I suppose, a futuristic Japanese space surrogate for Hooters.
FUNimation released the cast of English-speaking actors for the American release. While almost all anime released in the United States is released months, or even sometimes years after it airs in Japan, Space Dandy is the first time that a new anime series will be released with an English-speaking voice cast and not with English subtitles when it premieres. Space Dandy should be worth watching just for that little tidbit alone.
Screenwriters Dai Satō and Keiko Nobumoto wrote the series, and Shinichirō Watanabe directed every episode. This is the same creative team behind the widely popular Cowboy BeBop, and rarely watched Samurai Champloo. Just looking at the footage above, you can see the same stamp on Space Dandy. While Cowboy BeBop combined space pirates with jazz, and Samurai Champloo brought feudal Japan and hip-hop together, it looks like Space Dandy pairs a foppish space hero with a catchy disco score. It’s a strange juxtaposition, but Satō, Nobumoto, and Watanabe pull it off pretty well.
January is also a big month for anime fans in the States. In addition to Space Dandy, you’ll also get the theatrical release of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo. The third installment of the rebooted Neon Genesis Evangelion series, Rebuild of Evangelion, starts a very limited rolling tour on January 10th-29th. The tour makes stops at smaller independent movie theaters throughout the United States, even in Hawaii.
There is not much known about Space Dandy, but it follows Dandy, an alien hunter who is, as you might expect, “a dandy guy in space.” He searches for aliens with his robot assistant QT and a cat alien named Meow.
Space Dandy premieres on Adult Swim’s Toonami on January 4, 2014 at 11:30pm/12:30c. In Japan, the new series airs on January 5, 2014 at 11:00pm on Tokyo MX.
